December 2005

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

December 30, 2005 12:18

Well, its been a little while since I wrote here...

Regional auditions anre in 29 days, my school will be sending 3 or 4 violinists, a violist, and a cellist.
Plus, my school is hosting the festival this year, which will be great fun, except the band boosters wont pay for a hotel for us, which is half the fun...

I decided not to play in the other local competition. Its the week between regional auditions and festival, and I'd rather focus on regional music that try to pull something together.

This week, I finished two cello repair jobs, and I am finishing a violin. There will soon be pictures here, http://mountainstrings.bravehost.com

Thats all for now.

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A new Project

December 24, 2005 15:04

Ok... here is my latest project (besides varnishing a cello this morning):

I want to set up a strings program for blind and visually impaired kids in the area. This program would use Cds and other recordings, tactal music, brailled music, older (high school) students as mentors, trips to orchestra concerts, and other such things.

Anyway, if anyone here has experience teaching violin to blind/vi kids, I am veery open to ideas and imput.

Happy Holidays!

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Vibrato - Varnish

December 13, 2005 20:14

Well, I've now been playing violin for almost half my life, and yet the whole vibrato-thing stays just out of my reach. I'll admit that out of that time I've only really been working on vibrato for about a year (since I started with my current teacher), but this year is feeling like a long time......... Why can't I get it to work? Its sorta frustrating... but in the past 2 months, I've gotten moments of vibrato!!! Not much, but still encouraging. (And moments of vibrato have been slipping their ways into my parts at orch rehearsals!!!)

There is a highschool on Thursday. And, I think that we might manage to avoid completly embarassing ourselves.... Today, after school, we had our first (and only) rehearsal with the percussion (they rehearse seperate from us, but under the same director).

On Monday-ish, I have a band audition (flute). Then, the second week of January, we do reseating in orchestra. Then, on Jan. 28th there are Regional Auditions. I think (hope) I'll do better this year (Freshman year 2nd violin 4th chair, sophomore 2nd violin 13th chair... I don't know how that works).

Also on January 28, I'm supposed to play in a Mozart festival. A friend and I are playing two of his table pieces. Its really fun, but I don't know about leaving school at 4 in the morning to go to an audition 2 hours away, be there all day, and hopefully get home for a 7:30pm performance............ yikes.........

One last thing before I go to bed, today I put new strings on my violin (G-A: Pirastro Synoxa, E: Pirastro Wondertone Solo), and while I have only played on them for about an hour, I really like them (except the G, it seemed kinda muted...).

Oh wait, one more thing... at the high school, we had some interesting adventures with peg compound in the past few weeks.... About two weeks ago, my G peg was slipping and I (reluctently) decided to put compound on the peg. Then, when I was tuning it, I guess the friction built up enough that it sparked. It was REALLY scary!!!!!! There was a flash, and a puff of smoke (???), and I almost dropped my violin... Anyway, today one of my friends was putting compound on one of the trashy school violins, and she noticed that the compound was made out of isopropyl alcohol... isn't that really flamable? Arn't violins really flamable? Varnish? Wood? Friction? Who had that bright idea?

Good night

4 replies | Archive link

Acker Music

December 10, 2005 14:41

Last night was the big yearly Acker Music Festival (all the down town shops have music groups playing from 5:30 - 8:30, and hundereds of people walk around downtown listening to music. Its great fun (I played last year, but not this year, and I don't know which I like better...) I got to hear the quartet from my school, a duet that one of my closest friends is part of, the marching band, a flute group, a jug band, steel drums, a hand bell choir, and other such groups.

Completly off any topic, the 'ads by yahoo' today are really interesting..... (Sydney, I think yahoo has got you confussed for the place...)

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Then theres also
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Messiah

December 5, 2005 19:06

Messiah was yesterday. And, wow. I don't think I have ever been a part of something that big or exciting. Everything was simple amazing. To be on stage with that many people, playing something that beautiful isn't really discribable. There was one part, right before the end of the halleujah chorus, when everyone cut off together, I think it was then that I realised that this really was a quality production that I can be proud I was part of.

We played 1-21, 47, 48, and 41, all without an intermission which a way was really fun. I've never played for an hour and a half 'non-stop' before (we had about 5 seconds between movements (can you call them movements?) and a total of about 50 measures of rests (out of 25 pages)), it was kind exhusting, but so much fun and exhilarating (sp?)

(thoguh it really bugged me that someone 9in my section!) wore gray instead of black......................)

I have a neat picture from the concert that I'll try to post later...

Archive link

Messiah, Cello, and Jingle Bells

December 3, 2005 20:50

Messiah is tomorrow. It's sounding nice, and I'm really excited!!! There's something about having that many people onstage.

Also, today I reset the neck on my old teacher's cello that I'm rebuilding.

At the high school, our conductor wrote a holiday overture for us. Its full of inside jokes, but it souunds great (aside from our many mistakes). Its made up of jingle bell variations, but starst off sounding normal. It quickly goes into a minor key (which is really fun). Then, it copies those dreaded up-bows from Sleigh Ride. Next, we do it Samba-style. Then, we have a "Del Borgoesque" variation (for those of you not familar with hil, Del Borgo is an arranger/composer of high school music, and his compostions all have the exact same structure and style... so we do jingle bells in that style - slow disonate chords on the melody, pizz. melody with a high sustained note in the firsts...)
We then play jingle bells as an Irish jig (thats one of my favorites). The best (and hardeset variation is when we immitate a handbell choir - you only play about once every two measures, lots of counting, but when it works, its so neat! After the handbells, we go back to the theme (and minor part) from the begining, and close with a "Finale alla Tchaikovsky" - big chords seperated by grand pauses and it seems like it will never end.
Its really great!!!!